Elizabeth Spencer Wines Sioux Falls SD

This page provides useful content and local businesses that can help with your search for Elizabeth Spencer Wines. You will find helpful, informative articles about Elizabeth Spencer Wines, including "Elizabeth Spencer Wines: Style and Elegance". You will also find local businesses that provide the products or services that you are looking for. Please scroll down to find the local resources in Sioux Falls, SD that will answer all of your questions about Elizabeth Spencer Wines.

Elizabeth Spencer Wines: Style and Elegance

Provided By:

Spencer Graham was in town recently and we had the good fortune of tasting through the new releases of Elizabeth Spencer Wines. We are big fans of this enterprise which is owned and operated by partners Elizabeth Pressler and Spencer Graham, who are partners in life as well as in wine. Their tasting room in Rutherford is pictured on the right.

Spencer Graham and Elizabeth Pressler have been making wine together since 1998, although each has been involved with wine for more than three decades. Elizabeth grew up near Philadelphia and, beginning with her college years, became passionately involved with food and wine. Among the luminaries she has worked with are Madeline Kammen, Alice Waters and Elizabeth David. She later became involved in wine industry marketing for some of California’s finest producers such as Araujo, Etude, Kamen and many more.

Spencer spent his early years in Brazil where his parents worked in the foreign service. He later attended the University of Virginia and worked in restaurants in Charlottesville and got into wine in a serious way. He later got into the wholesale and import wine business. This is where he met Elizabeth and began representing some of her top California winery clients in the Mid-Atlantic. He and Elizabeth married in 1997 and settled in St. Helena where they began making wine, releasing the first vintage of Elizabeth Spencer in 1998.

Spencer and Elizabeth neither own vineyards nor a winery, yet they make terrific wine. They purchase grapes from a small number of growers in Napa Valley, the Sonoma Coast and Mendocino and make their wines at nearby facilities with the assistance of winemaker Matthew Rorick, a graduate in viticulture and enology from UC Davis.

Elizabeth Spencer wines are stylish and elegant. They are notably fruit forward and concentrated yet well balanced. They are generally aromatic, silky smooth on the attack and have excellent varietal character. They use oak judiciously, and the wines show it. Their white wines are delicate and the reds full-flavored. Most notably, given their high quality, Elizabeth Spencer wines are fairly priced.

Elizabeth Spencer has a terrific website: www.elizabethspencerwines.com which provides technical notes on each wine, for those interested in the winemaking details. Keep in mind that while Elizabeth Spencer Wines are widely distributed they are not easy to find due to the small quantities produced of each wine.

Elizabeth Spencer 2008 Chenin Blanc Special Cuvée Mendocino ($22) 89

This Chenin Blanc Special Cuvée displays delicate floral aromas with flavors of citrus, stone fruit and anise. On the palate it reveals a rich mouth feel with good acidity and a crisp finish with lingering mineral notes. Sourced from a 30-year old vineyard in Mendocino and whole cluster pressed and fermented in stainless steel. 500 cases produced.